


Rain

by peaceloveandjocularity, stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Alternating, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:47:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24970291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peaceloveandjocularity/pseuds/peaceloveandjocularity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: Charles follows Klinger into the rain.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Kudos: 13





	1. Rain

Surgery ends and you see him slip out the door, soundless as a shadow. It’s not the first time. You look to Hunnicutt, to Pierce. Have they noticed this runaway trend in your crossdressing corpsman? But Pierce’s knowing eyes, bluebird of happiness blue, are concerned but not knowing. And he is looking to  _ you _ for a change, knowing that this mystery is yours to solve. Strangely, perhaps even stranger than this war that isn’t, Pierce has become your best ally. He knows truths that you’ve never spoken and sometimes you see him nod out of the corner of your eye, nod like he’s sanctioning you – the true you, not your aristocratic persona or the man you are with a scalpel in your hands – all of you.

“I will go after him,” you resolve. “Talk to him.”

What you don’t say is that you’d lay down before his feet and let him walk over your outstretched form if it would bring him one step closer to the peace that’s been so obviously absent from his life these last few weeks.

***

You leave the mingled smells of disinfectant and alcohol prep (undercut, underneath, as ever by the coppery smell of blood) and step into an outdoors that is still foreign after all this time. The heat in the wind is wrong, as is the smell of the black mud that makes up the paths through the compound. You trail behind him as he follows these paths. 

You don’t call out. You have no right to stop him. What he can – and does - do to you… well, sometimes you have to fight to breathe, and sometimes you’re so joy-filled that it’s like a sweet and exotic high that bears no resemblance to that mistake you made with amphetamines in your earliest days here, and sometimes you shake with the anguish of not having him under your hands.

You find a certain wan comfort in the fact that at least you aren’t competing with another’s hands. If Maxwell was going to see someone, he would have taken more care with his appearance - and you would have ended up on your knees over him again. You aren’t surprised there’s no tryst on his horizon; he  _ is  _ married. You never imagined he’d be unfaithful. If you could have imagined it, you would have asked him to be unfaithful with  _ you _ and damn the consequences and the cost. 

He sees you when he slides into the jeep and gives a quick nod - permission - when you show your pleading eyes. Now there’s just the two of you on a rotten, rutted road in a country where neither of you belong. But he presses the accelerator down in a bid for escape; you hang on and wonder what he’s running from. 

Your eyes flick around the jeep’s interior. You take in the lighted gauges, the speedometer holding steady at a speed that would make you nervous if his hands weren’t so steady at the wheel. You’ve spent years keeping watch over your own hands for any betraying tremor; you’ve never made a mistake when your hands looked like his. Outside, the sky has begun to change. The extremes of the horizon have begun to darken, a cinema-slow shadowing, the closing of an eye.

“Another autumn storm,” you murmur, wondering if your unnamed and unknown destination is close. Klinger doesn’t look like he’s about to slow for rain. 

“Mmm-hmm.” His lips are pressed together and you wonder if it’s not his body’s attempt to hold on to this problem, this secret.

When you ask him where you’re going he just tells you to wait and see.

///

The road has vanished behind rolling waves of grass or wheat or something of that nature; you’ve come to a stop at the edge of a flat world shuddering under distant and concussive thunder. Weathered fences of grey timber section off some of the land, but there are no houses, no cars. Gentle Desolation, you imagine a road sign for this place, Population: Us.

You can see that the grass-wheat-whatever around you has been worn down by tires. This is where he’s been running to. But why? What’s the attraction? Before you can quite find a way to ask, someone shuts out the lights. A paint brush sweeps over the landscape and colors it dark grey. The wind wakes up.

Without speaking, the plucky Corporal, who somehow manages to be both and neither man and woman, opens the door and walks into the rising wind. You’ve heard stories of his wild, fuzzy-footed flight; will this wind make a kite of his too thin frame in its army green jacket? You call for him and are ready to fling open your door when you see him perch on the hood. The bulky metal makes an incongruous perch for his leanness and you just blink for a moment at seeing him with the wind in his hair and his body taut and somehow lifted upward, like the figurehead on a ship breaking up in the waves, like an offering to the storm.

Part of you thinks you should run outside and drag him down, pull him back into the safety of the vehicle. A strange, sidewise memory strikes you. You were small – six, maybe, or seven – and your dad let the car roll through the automatic wash with you inside. Water splashed and surged all around you and you felt your lungs constrict, even though not a single drop got inside. High above you both, lightning is making silver sport.

Another part of you just wants to watch him forever. You know he’s showing you something, bringing you here for this weird ritual that has you confused and half afraid. He knew the storm was coming. He chose to come into it and now he’s chosen to be part of it. And beyond all that, he’s heartbreakingly beautiful.

It’s nothing you needed the backdrop of a storm to be able to see. He’s always been beautiful. You see it every time he gets near you. You were cut down by the sheer look of him long ago. But this is exotic and strange, more so than his wildest costumes, which have spawned strange fantasies that you would never admit to even under torture. Watching him with your breath frozen down deep in your lungs, you know he’s done this before – let his body be pelted by hard rain, washed clean. You know he’s driven back soaked down to skin and you can’t help the way you wonder where you were when he shed his wet things.

The air thrums – charged currents brought here just to explode – and you pulse in your pants to the beat of thunder that’s coming ever closer.

He’s brought you to the eye of the storm.

And suddenly you know what he wants, why he’s allowed your presence.

He might be beautiful out there in that solitude – the crystal fall of rain wetting clothing to skin – but he doesn’t want to face this alone. Whatever storm is battering him, he wants you out there with him. You’re a healer. Once that truth is clear to you, you don’t even wait to compose yourself. Whatever he sees will be by flashes of lightning and his need outweighs your fear.

He turns toward you, bright currents burning in his eyes, when you take your place at his side. It’s the one place you’ve always wanted to belong; the two of you against the world, and you wish you could tell him about the safety you find in this combination, the way you + him = something better and stronger than either one of you could ever hope to be.

“So you’re storm-chasing now for that section 8?” you shout over the roar of the thunder. “Isn’t it dangerous?”

You think he laughs, a wild laugh that doesn’t belong to a voice like his. “Lightning never strikes the same place twice!”

He’s been hit then. Hurt. Burned. Rain begins to dance across your backs and you promise that you won’t take this from him. And then you reach over and take his hand. It has nothing to do with your desires, with the feelings you’ve never been able to shake and which you are confident you will carry to the grave. But if lightning does come for him, you want to feel it too.

///

He slides down from the hood after an age and a long shuddering sigh moves through his throat. You follow, getting back into the jeep. He’s soaked and shaking and you’re reaching for the ignition to turn the jeep on and turn the heater up. “Max?” 

He looks out into the dark and the silhouette of him is so perfect that you expect the night to reach for it and wind up his beautiful, velvet shadow because it’s fallen in love. “Laverne’s pregnant.”

You know it isn’t his. He’s here in this terrible place and ten thousand miles away a girl has opened her betraying legs and wrecked his heart. You wonder if it is permissible to embrace him. 

To hell with it, you decide. You held his hand already.

Positioning yourself in the cramped and awkward quarters of army property, you reach over and drag him to you. He shakes for a minute and it’s so much worse for you than that storm was. His face is buried in your shoulder and you’re stroking his wet and dripping hair. You’ve never met Laverne, but right now, you think you could throw her body into a hole without a second thought. You curse her in your thoughts and hope it holds. No one should have the right to hurt him…

“What happened?” you whisper. “How could this happen?” What you hate most is the silence you have become lord over. You mastered your tongue because you thought him happy, wanted him to have a full life, wanted to spare him loneliness. 

“Look at me.”

“Max...” your voice hurts your throat.

He tries to pull it all together, grinds the tears out of his eyes with his hand. “She just… found someone else. We, uh, make really good roommates. Friends. But that’s all. And now I have to pretend to be so happy.”

“No you don’t, Max. You did nothing wrong.”

His face falls and his hair hangs down over his eyes. “I don’t think I can leave. I think I… owe her this. I wasn’t enough for her. She always wanted kids, you know?”

“And she said she wanted  _ you _ ,” you point out. “You were  _ drafted _ , Max.” 

“I’ll take care of them – of her and the baby.”

Your eyes are wide with horror. He’s making a hell for himself! But you know him and if he believes this is the right thing to do, you won’t be able to sway him. But he’s going to live his life with no one to love him? Unsure of how to heal this, you try for more information. “If you were having problems, you could have come to me.”

He shoots you a look that you can’t decipher. “I didn’t know how to say it, Major. Not to anyone. She didn’t want me. She hasn’t for… for a long time. I quit trying because I knew it must be me.” The rest is a whisper that no one but you would ever be able to catch. “I don’t ever want to go home.”

It’s the opposite of everything he’s wanted until now. “You don’t have to,” you promise him, and you know you’ll do anything to make it the truth. “You will remain with me. We will be be adventurers, gentlemen of fortune.” 

He sniffs, wipes his eyes again. “That sounds wonderful.”

Real dark is following on the heels of that storm and you fidget with the heater again in the dark interior of the rain battered jeep. You have more things you want to say, but you might damn yourself if you say them.

“Max, may I ask you something?”

He looks at you funny, maybe because you asked. “Something like ‘why did I think it would work in the first place?’ Take your best shot, it’s nothing I haven’t said to myself.”

You hate the way he can crucify himself this way. It’s incredibly acrobatic of him – he holds himself up on the damn cross and somehow drives the nails in himself – but you never liked the trick. But you’re not sure you can reprimand him right now. He’s hurting. Who are you to make him flinch by snapping at him? You know you can - you’ve done it many times in OR. “No. I want to ask you…” You swallow back a bunch of inappropriate things. “You said you will take care of them. Are you going to live there?” It’s the closest you can come to asking if he’s going to sleep with her.

“We talked about it. I’ll have to keep some stuff there, of course, keep up an appearance.” He sounds bitter when he adds, “And if she wants anyone else to live with her, she’ll have to ask me for a divorce and pay the bills herself. She says she’s fine with staying married.”

You don’t think that will last. And it sounds like a plan that leaves him open to being taken advantage of. He’s ten thousand miles away; if she wants to practically move in her boyfriend, how will he know? But you don’t say anything. Lightning shimmers out in the distance, a blue white line splitting the dark at the seams.

There’s just one more question to ask and you find yourself stupidly wishing that you were more like Pierce or like Hunnicutt; bedside (passenger seat, in this case) manner is not your gift. You feel self-conscious and inadequate and helpless and idiotic and all you want to do is kiss him until he forgets he was ever married in the first place. “It is not my place,” you begin. “But I am here,”  _ and I love you.  _ “Max, the life you are condemning yourself to sounds so lonely!” You fumble in the ensuing silence. “I mean, being married but not really married? Surely you don’t have to be, ah,” You swallow down the word, “faithful.”

He waits a beat and you just know that he’s thinking that lonely is something he’s well accustomed to. “Major, my own wife didn’t want me. Who the hell else is going to?”

His eyes are as dark as the sky around you and you wonder if he’ll drive away and leave you in the mud of this field with the rain beating down on you. Maybe the universe will send a tornado to draw you up and away from the world forever. Do they have those here? Your voice is too young and too small in a way that it hasn’t been in years, but you can’t stop the timid word that somehow makes it past your lips. “Me.”

“Forgive me,” you say to his frightened face. “I know full well that this is the wrong time and the wrong way. You’re all wet and everything…” You  _ do _ sound stupid, but you can’t stop yourself. “But  _ I _ want you. Maxwell, I have  _ always, always _ wanted you. I love you. So if the right time should ever arrive...” You trail off, struggle, gesture at yourself and your huge, naked heart. “I’m here.”

Lightning flashes just outside.

“I’m not in love with you.”

It is by far the most horrible thing you have ever heard, (and that includes being called to war) but you expected nothing different. So, you sit there tense and hurt and lost and stupid and wonder if you have just made his life worse. Now he’s out a wife  _ and  _ knows about this wild, hidden hunger you never meant to reveal. 

But he’s too quiet. You know Max– know that there should be questions. Even if he doesn’t feel like you do, he’s still the kind of person who would appreciate the gesture – and the risk. Maybe he’s just too hurt to worry about your feelings right now.

So when he turns to face you, your heart is high up in your throat. You want to offer to go, but even though it would be cinematic to walk into the storm-tossed night, you don’t think you should. “Please speak,” you tell him. “You can say whatever you need to.”

He makes a thin, strangled sound and it makes the hair on your neck prickle. Things in traps sound like that. “No. No. I can’t.” He’s breathing fast, like he does when he’s sick and you wish you could use your body to shield him from whatever this is. Wish you could fight for him as you have for countless patients, wish you could touch him and make him well. 

“I just told you I’m in love with you,” you try to joke. “What could be worse than that?”

“But I’m not!” he cries and it’s like being stabbed in the heart with a knife made of silver and diamonds. Your hand goes to the door handle and you  _ are _ going to go – storm or not – when he speaks again. “I’m not in love with you, but I still want to.”

Your head whips around and you wonder if you there’s a form of compensation for verbal whiplash. You are in a car, after all. “What are you saying?”

“I want to,” he repeats in a voice full of grief. “I… I think I  _ need _ it. It’s been so long, and I can tell that you really want to. With me.” He gets quieter with each word and you know he’s ashamed. Ashamed to need you. “I think if I was with you…Major, I think you could make me forget.” Tears run down the sharp lines of his face and you’d do anything to stem them. “But it wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“Fair!?” You are aghast and almost shouting and your voice scares you. “Where was the ‘fairness’ in what she did to you!?” 

He makes a soft, derogatory sound at you. “So I should hurt  _ you _ because I’m hurting?”

“Your touch could never hurt me.” You’re lying; it will hurt you forever, but you don’t have the words to make him understand that you hurt anyway, that you’ve hurt for him since the day you realized that you were in love with him, and that the memory of touching him will carry you through all of the pain. “I am grown, Max. You needn’t protect me from my feelings or my choices. Simply tell me what you need from me and you shall have it. And when you wish me to cease, I will do that as well.” 

He stares at you like the lightning had stolen his sight, like you’re crazy, like it can’t be that easy. You know it’s up to you to push this over the edge. He said “need” and that’s what you’re going to answer. 

You begin again. “Maxwell, we can return to camp and I will never again speak of my feelings. If you so desire, I will lie and take it all back. But please grant me the privilege of being by your side tonight, of caring for you.” Your voice has become hoarse and you think there might be tears in your eyes. “I have wished to take care of you for so long. Please just tell me how.”

You’re crying and he’s crying and he looks at you through tears and tries to say your name. “Fuck me blind.”

You’re not sure if you start to shudder or if it’s the storm, but you ignore it so you can push him up against the driver’s side window. The protective part of you worries against the cold getting into his skin before you remember that he’s soaked through anyway. He looks scared to death, so you don’t kiss him. You just work on getting him out of a wet and clinging shirt Mud Hens t-shirt. The skin underneath is chilled and you massage his shoulders, rub warmth into his arms. His teeth chatter and his fingers shake in the air. “You do not have to touch me,” you tell him and your stomach twists at your words.

Tears are still slipping down his face and he nods, gives himself over to you. It’s the saddest thing you’ve ever seen, but you just swallow hard, bury your face in his neck, and start to tell him everything you have always hidden away. “I love you, Max Klinger. I love you so much.”

Something of what you’re saying must reach him; he starts to twist under your body and his legs come open a little. You can see that he is hard and pride shoots through you like a drug. You weren’t sure you could get to him this way. You have him – you have the one person you’ve ever been in love with – and you’re going to kiss him dizzy, kiss him down into the seat, kiss him wet. You only pause to smile when he gives you his hot mouth.

You’ve imagined kissing him but you start at first contact, your brain sending up warning signs. This is forbidden territory and once you go here, you don’t think you’ll be able to go back, to get unwound from the feel of him pulling you under like a riptide. You’re not sure anymore if it’s him or the storm, but this all feels impossibly dangerous and you’re half out of your mind with fear and with pity and with the way he’s allowing your tongue into his mouth. The window and the material of the seats is slick with the rainwater the two of you have carried inside in your hair and your skin and he slides down onto his back.

He’s already given you the most ultimate kind of permission. You never imagined you’d get to hear him say “fuck me” and the words sent white daggers of desire down through you in spite of everything. But you’re not ready yet. You’re so keyed up that you’re not entirely sure you could undo your own zipper, let alone go through all the intricate steps that will link his body to yours – ­ _ that way _ – for the very first time. Besides, you can still see pain and confusion sparking like a static storm in the depths of his eyes. You’ve got to break through all of that first. You’ve got to make him feel.

You hold his eyes, make him see you. You know he’s scared. Much as you’ve wanted him,  _ you’d _ be scared if his hands were on your hips, revealing all of it. “I will make it good,” you promise him. In a moment, you plan for your mouth to be too full to talk, so you want to get it all out there now. “Are you okay?” 

He gives that brave little nod you’ve seen him give before a heading into an OR that you both knew would be a living hell. He wants to see this through, fear or not. But you need more from him than that. “Do you trust me, Maxwell?”

You almost never say both syllables of his name; more often it’s Corporal or Max. But you have to say it to him now, to let him hear everything you’ve kept from him. You’re happy when you see wonder in his eyes. Some part of him understands, anyway.

“I do.”

Thunder rocks the vehicle side to side, it seems, and you bend your head and take him deep into your mouth.

You’ve never done this before – never could have imagined it with anyone else. For a moment, you just let him rest on your tongue: heavy, hard and soft at once, and aching from root to slit with a neglect you’ve promised to salve over – to end. You can hear the rain outside and the pounding of blood in your ears, the swift red tide he’s called up in you. You’re scared to death in the face of all of you’ve promised, in the face of his half-naked and wholly beautiful form partly taken into you. And, through all of your fear, you feel him stir.

It’s incredibly faint, just a quick pulse, a forward motion. But you recognize it. He is looking for touch. Looking for it – from  _ you _ . Your stomach goes wobbly and makes a sweet, uncertain plunge as your tongue wraps around him. He gasps to feel you begin and you’re taken by the way the sound of him acts as a counterpoint to all the chaos the two of you are being sheltered from. You’re learning now, running your tongue over thick veins and soft flesh, your nose tickled by the soft, dense patch of curls that surround the base of him. Even if the rest of you isn’t brave, your talented fingers manage the edge of that softness and curl to trace warm sacs heavy with need.

He’s pushing into your mouth and you begin to move up and down on him in answer. He mewls like some wounded thing and butts his head against the doorframe. His body has grown so warm that you’re surprised that steam doesn’t rise from his skin. The smell and taste of him surrounds you and you hear yourself make yearning sounds around him. You want him to cross that first bridge with you. You want it done with. You think it will break through the pain that’s half-hollowed him. You think his eyes will look familiar again after, will look, again, like the eyes of the man you’ve served so long beside. And if he thinks this is going to be over with a single orgasm, he’s wildly mistaken.

The feel of him is soft and sacred and somehow set apart – like this most secret part of him has its own needs that seem to shatter the rest of him just in the asking. He’s making these ragged little sounds and you can’t help wondering just how long it’s been since loving hands drew him out and worshipped the whole length of him. You know that  _ she _ never did this for him. She would have told him it was disgusting. You almost shake your head. Here you were, working overtime to shore up his self-esteem (in between joking with and arguing with him) and all the while, there’s been someone behind the scenes shredding it, tearing him down. You used to wonder why he never seemed to believe you all of the way when you praised him, why all the magic that’s always lived in your words (when you cared to reach for it) never quite worked on him.

Your lips feel funny – swollen, you guess, with your work, but you can’t help but feel he’s been waiting for your word. “I will swallow,” you tell him. “Go ahead.”

His whole body shudders in answer and you’ve barely got him back inside before he’s pushing deep, ramming hard. The motions of his sweet, hot body tell you just how he’d feel if he was buried somewhere else. You haven’t spared a single touch for yourself, but you can’t help but feel as if you’re climbing with him, straining to reach the end. When he tenses, the muscles in your neck draw taut as wire.

You expect it to be strange – the spill of him, the contractions of your throat as you make him part of you in a way you’d never give up even under torture – but it’s too fast for you to feel anything but grateful that you were able to give this to him. When you look up, you can see that his face is drawn and pinched and you know the taunting voices he’s hearing in your mind. As he fights tears and a shame that should never be part of something as beautiful as what you just saw (the wild trembling of his stomach has wrecked you forever), you take his hand and draw him out into the rain.

///

You don’t give him time to wonder at the feel of your huge hands sweeping his naked body up onto the hood of the jeep. The deepest and darkest part of you has yielded up this fantasy; if his body is an open wound then you’re about to become a bandage and a shield at once, a cocoon for him to retreat into, a haven where he can heal. You hate leaving him exposed to the rain and you hope he’ll close his eyes as you hit your knees. You’re going to have to shed your wet clothing eventually, but it isn’t important as you kneel in the mud with the periwinkle smell of wet meadow grass rising up around you, as you hold his thighs apart.

You’re glad that he’s come once. Without that orgasm to calm him, you don’t think he’d even let you get into position like this. You will stop at once if he hates it, of course, but the position you’ve chosen might have something to do with your earnest internal prayer that he’ll allow this. Maybe it won’t be enough to bind you. Maybe you’re a fool for investing so much in something as simple and primal as sex. A cool drop of rain kisses the corner of your mouth as you begin.

The contrast in temperature is what you notice first. The rain has made it difficult to taste his skin, but it has also made him cool. Your tongue is hot in comparison as you lave his inner thighs – breathing hot breaths between his legs.  _ Make a noise _ , you quietly beg.  _ Just one damn sound _ . Max is a very vocal creature; you want confirmation of his pleasure. What you don’t expect is for his spine to twist against the slick metal as he groans out your name. “ _ Charles _ !”

You are comforted even as it turns you on. He’s not imagining someone else. He wants  _ you _ to do this to him. Holding him open, you push your tongue inside. He screams to feel the heat of you there, screams at the sweet, shallow thrust, the slickness you’re leaving in your wake. If you were in bed together, you’d make it even better for him. You’d have proper oil then, and you’d tease him open until he felt empty without it. This is going to be a little rougher. Tongue still circling him, you coat a finger with dampness and ease it past rings of muscle that never expected to yield in this way. You’ve done it to yourself – imagining him – so you know how slow and easy to go. When he’s ready, he’ll move for you. The rain keeps falling, slides in slow streams down your back, dances on the back of your neck.

Your world shrinks down to the feel of him, this most personal warmth drugging you, reconfiguring the synapses inside of your brain. The feel of his skin quick-fires through every nerve and you know you’ll always feel him as close now; you’re remade by what he’s allowed. You’re alternating between your mouth and your hands now, your free fingers gripping the horizons of his thighs, of the sweet ass you’ve watched so many times in skirts and pants alike without him knowing a thing. You guess he knows everything now, with you going down on your knees this way, but you push past questions of how it will be tomorrow, of how you’ll go back to working together. You promised him everything and you’ll deliver it somehow.

A sharp sound spirals over the sound of the rain on the hood and you lift your head to hear him saying, “Please, please, Major, please!”

You were made to answer that, to answer him, and you know that your eyes are bright with joy when you get up off of your knees and show yourself to him at last. You think, again, that he’s like some kind of offering to the storm, all spread out and wet on the hood, and he watches your hands as you fumble your pants down past your hips. One kick, and you’re naked in the cold rain, your hard cock an exclamation point between your legs, a stiff sign pointing right to him. He sighs or moans or something at the sight of you and you try to hold onto that sound so you can replay it to yourself later when you’re touching yourself and pretending it’s him saying, “Please, please.”

Braced over him, you think you should say something. You can feel his warm breath on your cool skin, the fired jasmine and licorice tea smell of him rises from skin you will never tire of having under your hands. His eyes are too much for you, so you bury your head in the crook of his shoulder and line your body up with his. You expect him to tense at first contact, but there’s just a slow, inevitable slide, the rock of your sanity being pulled in by the sea of his body. Everything burns for a moment and you think that it might have torn you apart  _ there _ , ripped that thin, sensory membrane that sets you apart from him, but then you shift a little, thrust, and it’s just the heat of his body, the miracle of him taking you inside. You plan to stop once you’re in a little. You want to give him time, to give him a way out if he wants one. But his hips move and he’s drawing you down somehow, insisting on movement and depth.

Your voice shakes, breath coming jagged into his neck. “Max… Max...” You might say “thank you.” He doesn’t let you lose yourself in conversation though. He shifts against you, reminds you of where you are, urges you on. You wish you knew why. You know what he said, but you can’t be sure of what he’s feeling and you’re afraid that he might be doing this for you.

You don’t stay afraid for long. A few deep thrusts and he screams for you – a wild, joyful cry. His body jerks and bounces against the hood and it’s no longer you thrusting into him, but him rocking up over you, him guiding you to ground on that sweet shore, again and again. His frantic movements would make his hair fly around his face if it wasn’t slicked to his skull and your mind goes into static and shatter and the splendor of his body being made yours.

You feel the storm of your pleasure gathering inside of you and you beat it back for as long as you can, willing this to go on forever. You think that the love you bear for the broken and beautiful creature beneath you might actually give you magic enough to suspend time, to let you love him outside of meaningless things like minutes and hours. He breaks the spell with a soaring scream, spilling against your stomach and your thighs in a second climax that you didn’t even think possible. You come inside of him with tears running down your face.

Legs trembling, body wracked by aftershock, you choke back a sob as you draw out of him, as you gently clean him up with rainwater and your own castoff shirt. You’ve just had everything you ever wanted. You’ve just lost it.

You wait a long moment and hope that he’ll speak, that his scream-wrecked voice will suddenly say that he was mistaken, that he does love you and that somehow he always has. There’s only the sound of the rain.

The drive back is all silence. You’re in the driver’s seat and he’s curled up in that nearly feline way he has, turned away from you, half-dressed, shaking with cold. It only takes a few quick glances for you to realize that you can’t reach him anymore. The ridges of shoulder and collarbone show through his wet shirt; his body is making barriers. As deep as you’ve been, you don’t have the password to make him open again.  _ I’m not in love with you _ . His words are tattooed across your brain and the knowledge they carry keeps you firmly on your side of the vehicle. You leave him in his tent and you stay just long enough to see him sink down – wet, weak, and wavering. You walk out crying because you want to be the one who’s allowed to lift him up.

///

In the days that pass, you make good on the promises you spoke. You remain his companion. You joke with him. You work with him. You share space without a single shred of awkwardness. You never speak of the storm or ask after his home life. 

Your only problem now is the rain.

So far, you have walked out of a lecture, three meetings, and half a dozen meals. At the sound of raindrops hitting any surface, you become so hard that you can barely breathe. You’re waiting for the night that it rains during OR. Your anesthetist is going to get an eyeful. You think about trying to start conversations about the effect of weather on arousal (there must be research somewhere); you think of reminding everyone that you’re young and that this is natural and not your fault. You start carrying things that you can hide yourself behind. You  _ stop _ showering and switch to baths.

And when it rains at night and you’re alone in your bed, you cry as if the rain has moved inside of you for good.


	2. Shine

Nearly twelve weeks have come and gone, calendar pages turning, since the Major had followed you into the rain and helped heal your battered ego by making your body sing under his hands. It seems unreal - those images that you revisit in your cot as you drift off: the Major’s eyes flashing like lightning, the darkness at their centers, the shine of rain in the hollow of his throat. 

You’ve begun to become back to yourself after the shock of Laverne’s betrayal. Married over the radio because you’d been sent here like a prisoner for a crime you’d never done, you never even slept with her. You tell no one when the divorce papers arrive with a note explaining that there’s someone back there in Toledo who wants to marry her and take care of her and the little one. You sign. What else can you do? And it feels like signing your own death warrant because now there’s no one waiting for you to come home, so why should the universe let you come back at all? 

Ever since you were shipped to this unit, you’ve quaked with fear, shivered with cold, vomited at the things you’ve seen in OR and sewed, sewed, sewed as if you were making a silk and lace shield the size of South Korea. Your fingers are calloused and your lingerie is exquisite - and haven’t you earned some measure of comfort? You know the Major will say yes if you ask. 

You know what he said. It’s wrong - more wrong, maybe then what happened between you and Laverne. The two of you were just kids. But Winchester is grown and not given to impulse. You have no idea what you did or said or wore to catch those eyes of his - they’re some color you’ve never seen anywhere else, though you’d love to have it in watered silk spilling over your thighs, a silvery corset underneath with ivory banding - but he took responsibility for his feelings before, so maybe he will again. You don’t want anything to do with love ever again. You know that much. Not his or anyone else’s. Laverne made it real clear that you weren’t worth keeping around. If you’re not good enough for a Toledo gal, there’s no way Winchester’s taking you home. So you won’t ask for anything beyond his rainy nights and the way his hands feel on your skin. 

///

You choose a quiet night and fall into step with him, bring him back to your tent. You don’t let the wonder in his voice when he says your name get to you. “Max?” He brushes your cheek with trembling fingers. “Is this… have you had a change of heart?”

You can tell from his voice that he wants to add something sweet, to call you some refined high class version of “his.” But then he reads your eyes and his face goes purposefully blank. “Oh. Your, ah, your heart remains quite closed, I see.” 

You want to tell him that it  _ has  _ too. You can’t risk being smashed up like kindling wood - not again. You’re just now getting everything to stay together and you wake up every day feeling like a fool. “You can tell me no,” you remind him. 

He makes a sound that is somehow pained and amused at exactly the same time. “No, Maxwell, I cannot. You may not wish to hear this, but I want you so badly… indeed, I love you so much, that I could no more turn from your outstretched hand than I could refuse care to the wounded. If you wish me here, then, darling, here is where I shall be.” So saying, he begins to undress you and his unblinking eyes - so hungry! - make you shiver like a man in a gale; your teeth clack together! 

You grip his wrist. “Charles, maybe you shouldn’t.” 

He kisses your neck so hard it will bruise and you throw your head back without meaning to. “I am not the one in need of rescue here, Maxwell,” he says, voice harsh with emotions you can’t name. 

It’s better than the first time because you want it - god, you want him - and he won’t let you break eye contact. You hope it’s not his way of making you see him, because you  _ do _ \- but you can’t let him in past a certain point. You won’t. You don’t. Not even when he lowers you over his lap after painstaking preparation you would have been happy to skip. Who cares if it hurts? You’ve been hurt before: pool hall fights, your father’s fists, the men who objected to your skirts with punches and kicks, Laverne. You can take it, can take him. When you tell him so, he reminds you that he is the physician; adding to your pain goes against everything he is. 

You wonder if it’s his training as a physician that allows him to please you so expertly. You praise him, scream for him, lose yourself and try to hide the knowledge from yourself that with every touch, he’s trying to make you fall for him. 

***

You never fall but you find a jagged edge that snags the thing the two of you make together and begins to unravel it. You feel it coming undone and you try to bridge the gap with your body, getting closer than close because he allows it and you need it. But one night he sits on the edge of your cot and says, “I should not have to miss you this much when you’re in my arms.” 

“Major?”

“I knew when we began that I was not made for flings,” he says. “I thought that I could endure this because I’ve wanted you so badly, but,”

“But?” you prompt. This is more conversation than you’ve had of him in some time, though you enjoy his in-bed wordiness and get positively hard from his accent. 

“Nothing. Nevermind. I’m just tired, rambling.” 

You allow the lie because it allows you to lie down with him again, to derive your pleasure frim him just a little longer, but he’s moving away from you like the tide, withdrawing, and you can feel it in your bones. After Laverne, you aren’t surprised and you promise yourself you won’t cry over him. 

\\\\\

It doesn’t take long for him to cut you loose. You knew it was there - the cold undercurrent presaging a storm - but you thought you could keep from shivering in it. 

He does not say, “You are killing me,” but you don’t need him to. What he does do, and it’s worse, is ask you if any chance exists, “Or even a ghost of a chance, that I could win you? I can love and suffer in hope, but without it…” 

You shake your head. “I don’t think so, Major.”

He nods as if he expects it. You don’t know how to answer that gesture; it seems to need more than you can give, more, maybe, than you’ve ever had. You watch him walk, unbowed, into falling rain. 

///

Your life goes on after you have absented yourself from Charles’ arms just as it went on after Laverne - and isn’t that unfair? Shouldn’t you be granted some breathing space? You tell yourself that this shouldn’t hurt. It was nothing. You told him as much. But you find yourself drooping in your skirts like a flower pelted by a summer storm. 

Then you leave off the skirts altogether. The glittery lipgloss and eyeshadow. You never thought about it at the time, but Charles seemed to enjoy the soft parts of you as much as anything else. You remember the way he traced your rouged cheeks, your painted lips, smiling as your tongue chased his finger, the way he made you open your mouth… 

You grab Hawkeye in the middle of the night as he finishes up rounds. “I know physicals aren’t due,” and you surprise yourself by talking quieter than usual, almost as if you’re shy. “But can you check me out, sir?” 

He obliges, doesn’t dig when you just say “something’s wrong” and leave it there. He does admit that he’s been a bit worried about you. “The spring’s out of your step,” he says, listening once more to your heart which has apparently learned to beat on, though broken. “And I haven’t seen a spring flower behind your ear or on your hat all season. We’ve had the April showers.” 

_ Oh _ , you think,  _ I know. I was out in them… it’s just that somehow it’s only now I’m drowning.  _

He listens a bit, prods you some, pronounces you fit. “You sure this isn’t a section 8 thing?”

“No. It hurts.  _ I _ hurt.” 

“Where?”

“My chest. It won’t go away.” 

“Dehydration?”

“I’ve been in the rain more than anytime in my life, and that includes selling newspapers in Toledo in the summer.” 

“If it’s not that, I don’t know what to tell you, kid. Physically, you’re fine. I will say, though, illness doesn’t usually make people change their passion for slips.” He taps his head. “You sure your problem isn’t up here? I can call Sid.” 

You shake your head. You’ve done some crazy things lately, sure, but you knew what you were doing and why. You just don’t know why this latest wound won’t close. 

“Alright,” Hawk agrees. “Then tell me.” 

“I don’t even know where to start. I got divorced. Did you know that?”

“Of course not! When?” He surprises you with his anger. “Klinger, you should have said! We would have helped you!”

“We?” You’re confused. 

“Your friends. All of us. The Colonel. Father Mulcahy. Hell, even  _ Charles  _ is fond of you.” 

He sees the shudder of pain that wracks you. 

“Uh-oh. Klinger, is there any chance that you’re not feeling so good has anything to do with the fact that Winchester’s switched to  _ really _ sad records lately?”

You’re impressed. The match between the two of you seems impossible (illegal, too) but Hawk has guessed it right off. You confess that after Laverne did a number on your heart, “I, uh, I might have passed it on to the Major.”

Hawk’s brow furrows. “You married and divorced Charles?” 

“Sort of.” You tell him about the rain, about your selfish attempts to have him without letting him get close enough to hurt you. 

He chastises you - but not for what you expect, reminding you again how well-loved you are, how the whole camp would have helped and supported you if you had just asked. Then he tells you that you have to consider that the reason you’re hurting might be that Winchester got too close from the first. “You can’t outsmart pain, Klinger,” he tells you. “You can’t really tell your heart to care just a little. You’re not built that way. You asked me for a diagnosis, right? Here it is: you never would have let him put his hands on you if he didn’t already have your heart.” 

You walk him through the wreckage that is your life. You tell him your great sin - using the man who had the bad luck to fall for you. 

“Except he doesn’t love me now,” you say, and your chest starts up again. “And that might be worse than my wife having someone else’s baby.” 

“Did he say that?”

“What?”

“That he doesn’t love you anymore?” 

“No. But he doesn’t. And even if he does, it won’t last. People don’t keep me.” 

“Did you ask him if he’d keep you?” 

“No.” 

Hawk tries to tease you by imitating Winchester’s accent. “A Winchester never surrend-ahs his possessions, Klinger.” 

You don’t mean to, but first you laugh - and then you sort of moan. “Don’t turn me on, Captain,” you say, only half-joking. “I’ll just end up crying.” 

Hawk howls. “You have it bad, my dear. Best go make up with him - and quick.”  _ And after you do, I’m keeping my eyes open. You and Winchester!? How the hell does that even  _ **_work_ ** !? 

“Make up?” The words feel foreign on your tongue. 

“Uh-huh. You know. Make up - then make out.”

You shiver, thinking of the terrible things you’ve said to the Major. “I don’t think that’s even allowed.” 

Hawk grins at you. “You had sex with him. You already broke army regs and civilian law - I think you’re good.”

“He gave me permission for the sex part,” you point out. 

Hawk’s eyes gentle. “Klinger, I think the feelings were there all along, too.” The idea of Charles touching someone casually is, to his mind, you can tell, absurd. 

“I should dress up for this,” you say, feeling the faintest reemergence of hope. 

“Beej and I will be somewhere else. You’d better be asleep in our tent when we get back tonight young man.” He shakes his finger at you. 

You smile. “I’ll do my best. Thanks for… for being okay with all of this, sir.” 

“Klinger, I’ve offered to have other men’s babies. You and Charles are far from the weirdest thing in this camp.” 

***

That night, you dress in the same outfit you wore in the rain - right down to the earrings. You also whip up a little token gift - a tiny felt heart. 

“I brought you something,” you tell Charles, placing it on his lap. “It’s my heart, Major, and it belongs with you.” 

He looks at you with empty eyes - a taste of your own medicine. “Klinger, I need neither your pity nor your pacifier.” He sits the heart aside and it feels like the one inside your chest has developed a bleed. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he tells you. “Half the blame is mine. I put myself in this strange situation with you, but I’ve no desire to return to it. I cannot handle being so close to you if you do not feel the same. You deserve to be happy.” 

“Whether I’ll be happy or not is kinda up to you, Major.”

“Klinger I’ve spent months trying to make you happy to my own detriment. If I continue to feel this way for you with my feelings unrequited… I’m not sure how much longer I could survive it.”

You’ve never heard this kind of vulnerability. “I know. I know what I did to you was wrong. I’m sorry, Charles. But when did you hear me say unrequited?”

You see him smirk, a cold, almost cruel gesture. “Your ‘I don’t think so,’ said it for you. Quite frankly, it’s been screaming in my head ever since. 

“I didn’t think so because I didn’t want to get hurt again. But guess what I found out? Being without you hurts worse than being left.”

He hears you - maybe your emotions - your affection - more than your words. “Max, what are you saying?” 

You come closer to him and retrieve the heart, holding it out. “It’s still yours if you want it. I think... I think you had it out there in the rain. I was just scared to admit it.” 

He is still wary. “I have ached for this,” he admits. “Max, you said no one could love you and I proved you wrong, but I’ve yet to be proven wrong.  _ I’m  _ the unlovable one. It’s been proven time and time again. You have a camp of people who love you. Who cherish you.” 

“Major, you have  _ me _ . And I have enough costumes to  _ be _ a whole camp.”

“This… it smacks of pity, Max.” 

“I didn’t think it was pity when you followed me into the rain.” 

You see anger flash in his eyes. “That was  _ never  _ about pity. That first time in the rain was the first time you broke my heart.” 

“I know. Major, I’d do it different if I could. Do it over. I’m wearing the same clothes.”

“I noticed.” 

“Please let me try again. “

He nods - a tiny motion - and you kiss him. He’s impossibly stiff in your arms. “Believe me now or should I keep going?” 

“I might need you to continue proving it to me.”

“Good,” you say with a smile. “My life needed a purpose beyond pretty stitches.” 

He finally takes the heart from your hand, ( _ it  _ has pretty stitches) evaluates it as if for surgery before pronouncing it to have stitches fit to rival his. “I missed you, Max.” 

“I didn’t tell you because I was hurting over Laverne, but your voice is one of my favorite things about you.” 

“I have missed listening to you as well... even when you do stray down vulgar paths.”

You chuckle, thinking of all the wild things you’ve seen him do. You climb into his lap without bothering to ask permission. “My vulgar paths always seemed to have the right effect on you, Major.”

He shifts under you, affected now. “Ah, granted.” You can tell he’s still frightened, though. “Max, your intentions when last we spoke were to return to Toledo and make a life,” you can tell he wants to say something else - maybe “sham?” - “with Laverne. I cannot… I have come to learn that I do not want to occupy second place in your life.” 

You’re proud of him; that was very brave “I signed divorce papers, Major. I’m not going back. Me and Laverne? We’re nothing. She sold the apartment and moved all my stuff to my parent’s.”

The last thing you expect to happen next is for his perfect posture to return and his hands to drop from your waist like petals from a flower in cold rain. “Get down, please.” 

You don’t understand what’s happening, but it hurts. “Major?” 

He looks ahead, away, you think, into a life in which you have no place. A life in which you do mot exist. At last he says, “Just as I am incapable of having a fling with you, I am also incapable of serving as a replacement until you get over your wife. Goodnight, Corporal. **”**

“I’ve been divorced for months,” you cry. “And  _ I never slept with her _ ! You’re the one I can’t get over. You got a replacement for that!?”

“Call it vanity or ego, but I find myself well over being chosen last.” 

Tears rise in your eyes, sudden and cold; no one has ever made you cry the way Charles can. “I would have chosen you first if I had known I could. The best I can tell you, Major, is that I know you’re the right choice. If you weren’t, you could never hurt me this much.” 

You can leave now; you feel lighter, even. At least he knows. He comes up behind you, touches your shoulder to say, “I can hear it in your voice, the way I’ve been feeling for months, and maybe it is selfish, but I am glad to know that you understand it now. That being said, how can I ease the pain?” 

“You’re right be glad,” you admit without turning. Then you add, “I’m getting back in your lap now.” 

He obliges, holding you tighter than you knew he could, his face buried in your neck. You fear for a moment that you’ve chased all the gentleness from him, but then he strokes your hair. “I have missed you, Max, so much.” 

“War might be hell, sir, but fighting for you could kill me.” You nuzzle back into him. “You’re the only place I feel safe.”

Charles does not, you know, approve of romantic sentiments. “In Korea during a war?” 

“Home doesn’t have to be a place on a map,” you remind him, demonstrating that you are being truthful rather than sentimental. 

You can almost see him reorganizing the hierarchy of your happiness. He has just surpassed Toledo - and knows it. 

“Home is still Boston, to me,” he tells you. “You’ll come with me?” 

“If you’ll let me.”

“Let?” He doesn’t notice his grip tighten but you do; he’s not letting you go. 

“I still wear dresses,” you remind him. Now that this is real, you want him to know what he’s taking on. “I’m not high class. Back home, I won’t belong beside you for those reasons and a whole lot more, but I’d love to be there anyway.” 

“I have tried not having you there and it almost killed me, so, yes, you’re staying. If I have to bribe, bully, or bargain my family into a state of acceptance, I will do so. It has always been me and Honoria against the world. With you added to the team, I do not think we can help but win.” 

For the first time, you really believe it will work out, all of it. You will survive the war and go home with him. 

“We can make a new world for us. Your money and brains, my schemes and designs,”

He picks up on your theme, “And Honoria stage managing us to keep the worst kinds of trouble at bay. Yes, I can live in a world like that one.” 

And rain or shine, you will stay with him and he will be your world. You tell him so. Later, you’ll show him and make him feel it. When the Captains return, you’re almost asleep, curled tight against the love you nearly lost. You sense them smiling. 

End! 


End file.
